The Why of Things: A Novel (30 page)

“I’m sure he has loads of toys that he loves at home,” Joan says. “Actually, I
know
he does,” she fibs. “I saw them.”

“I don’t care,” Eloise says, adamant. “It doesn’t matter if he has other toys, because he loves his pig. He
needs
his pig.”

“I don’t think he
needs
it, sweetie. And isn’t it nice to have something to remember him by?”

“I have my
memory
to remember him by.” Eloise blinks at her, wide-eyed and irate. “If you had
waited
in the first place to bring him home so I could have said
good-bye, I
would have remembered his pig. But you didn’t wait. And you forgot. And now we have to bring it to him.”

Joan takes a deep breath, pulls her lips in; the washing machine thunks behind her. Eloise’s eyes have begun to fill with tears.

“
Please
, Mom. I’m asking nicely. Please, please, please please please let’s bring it to him. I really want to say good-bye.”

Joan nods; there is the plate to return anyway. “If it means that much to you—”

“—It does!”

“Then we will.”

*  *  *

R
OWLEY
Auto Salvage is located just off the main road several miles north of Rowley proper, in a large, open lot hemmed in by a chain-link fence. Although it takes Eve and Anders only half an hour or so to get there, Eve is glad not to have had to ride her bike all the way; while it’s not far by car, she thinks, it would be a hike on a bike, and the unintended rhyme amuses her enough that she repeats it aloud as they pull into the driveway.

Her father glances at her. “Yes, it would,” he agrees, squinting out again through the windshield.

“But would I be allowed, now?” she asks, referring to the new helmet she has worn for the entirety of the drive, which they stopped off for at the bike store in Gloucester on the way.
If you want to go Rowley, this is your half of the deal
, her father had insisted, to her chagrin.

“Absolutely not,” he says.

Eve unbuckles her seat belt and removes the helmet from her head, surveying the place as they approach. Rowley Auto Salvage is much more in keeping with what Eve had envisioned on her way to the junkyard yesterday, with hundreds of junked cars parked in semiordered rows, large piles of rusted scrap metal, stacks of wheels and tires, Dumpsters filled to capacity. Off to one side of the lot is a large brown machine that looks like a giant veterinary scale, but with a roof that slides up and down two fat poles on either end. This, Eve guesses, is the car squisher, and the reason
that some of the vehicles here are flattened versions of their former selves. Beyond this machine, parked in a second lot of its own, is a fleet of tow trucks, among which Eve spies two, which are identical to the one that came to the quarry the other day. She returns her gaze to the endless rows of cars, wondering if James Favazza’s truck might really be among them.

Anders parks in front of the main building. Through the nearest door, Eve sees two men working beneath a car mounted up on a lift, likely removing any worthwhile parts. She snaps a shot with the old Pentax, which she’s brought along for the sake of documentation, then reaches for the door handle.

“Evie.” Anders grabs hold of her wrist as she is getting out. Eve turns, looks at her father expectantly. “You let me do the talking,” he says firmly.

“I will, but—”

“No buts about it.”

“No but, Dad—” Anders interrupts her with a look and a raised finger. “Fine,” she says. Anders nods once, touches her lightly on the nose.

They approach the warehouse door where the men are working, Anders guiding Eve with a hand on the base of her neck, both gentle and warning at once. They pause in the doorway, their shadows squat versions of themselves on the oil-stained floor, Anders’ shadow headless, decapitated by the line where the sunlight ends. The shadow of his outstretched arm reminds Eve of his grip, and she shrugs him off as she peers into the shadows within. The shelves, she sees, rise ceiling high, and the auto parts they hold are evidently organized by type and brand of car: transmissions, steering columns, axles, doors, Honda, Volvo, Nissan, Ford. The car the men are pillaging now is a Subaru, its windshield a shattered web, the front of the car a mangled mess of what it used to be. As Eve stares at it, Anders clears his throat;
one of the men working beneath the car looks over his shoulder, his arms raised up as he loosens something with a wrench. “Help you?” he asks.

“Yes. I called this morning about an antenna,” Anders replies. “For an ’82 Buick Riviera?” He gestures over his shoulder in the direction of the car.

“Right. You spoke to me.” The man puts the wrench down on a worktable nearby and steps toward them. “Believe it or not,” he says, “I found one that did come from a Riviera. A ’74, not an ’82, but the mounting hole would be the same—they’re pretty standard. To be honest, most any old antenna would do the trick. But if you want authentic.”

“I do,” Anders says. “Great.”

The man jerks his head toward the back of the warehouse. “I got it back in the office,” he says. Anders follows the man in that direction; Eve starts to follow them both, but remains where she is, transfixed by the car on the lift. The front of the car is so smashed it appears about half the length it should be, the hood bent back like a hairpin, revealing an engine that looks as if it had been rattled by an earthquake. From her vantage on the ground, she can see the tips and sides of different parts that should be lying flat instead protruding from within. The front fender is gone completely, and the right front wheel is bent weirdly on its axle. She looks down at the man still standing underneath the car, who is looking upward with a grimace of concentration as he removes the rear muffler. His name tag reads Robert. “Um,” Eve begins, despite her father’s admonition not to speak.

The man looks over at her.

“What happened?” she asks, nodding toward the car; she cannot help herself. “It looks pretty bad.”

“Sure does,” he says. “Head-on into something, that’s for sure.”

“But you don’t know what happened?”

Robert shakes his head. “Nope,” he says. He sets the muffler on the table and steps out from beneath the car, folds his arms across his chest as he looks up at it. “But I betcha whoever it was didn’t get out of that one alive.” He sniffs.

Eve blinks, picturing the car on the side of the road, smashed into a tree, the driver’s head against the windshield. She pictures the row of ambulances, fire trucks, police cars lined up on the shoulder, the line of curious traffic crawling by, mist rising from the pavement, because, she thinks, it would have been a rainy day. She pictures firemen in their big black boots standing in groups of two or three, paramedics trudging down the grassy slope to where the car sits steaming in the rain. She wonders if they’d had to use the Jaws of Life, or if it was too late for that. It was a man; for some reason she feels as certain of this as she does that it was raining. She wonders if he had a family, kids. She wonders if they’ll always think about what they were doing while their father lay trapped and dying or even dead behind the wheel of a car, or if maybe they were there, unscathed. The backseat looks okay.

She swallows as it dawns on her with sickening rapidity that she has no idea what became of Sophie’s car. How, she thinks, could she have never wondered, not back in October, and not even this week, after James Favazza? How had its fate not have once crossed her mind? She is ashamed when she thinks of the effort she’s put into finding James’ truck by contrast, though it’s true that she’s been looking for evidence and artifacts, not searching out a grave.

“Why don’t you just smush the thing?” she asks. “There can’t be a lot left to take. I mean, a muffler?”

“Most of the engine’s a loss. But everything else—oil pan, headers, axles.” Robert shrugs. “Why let that go to waste?”

Eve turns to him, her face hot. “Because someone
died
in that car.”

Robert looks at her, bemused. “Or they didn’t,” he says. “It’s a car, either way.”

*  *  *

J
OAN
and Eloise stop at Magnolia Street on their way to Eloise’s camp, and the first thing Joan notices is the a pot of flowers on Elizabeth Favazza’s stoop. It wasn’t there yesterday. They are yellow mums, an ironically cheerful explosion of color beneath the American flag, which, in the day’s quiet, hangs unmoving. The wind chimes are also still, and as they wait on the stoop after she has rung the bell, Henry’s pig and Elizabeth Favazza’s plate in a plastic bag at her side, Joan finds herself wishing for their tinkling melody; the only other sound is the grind and thunk of a garbage truck making its way down the street. She watches the huge levers shovel and shift inside the back, devouring loads of trash like so many mouthfuls of food. Eloise stands beside her, eyes intent on the front door.

It wasn’t much of a concession to bring the dog the pig; whether or not Elizabeth Favazza expects it, whether or not the woman is even aware that she has given it away, Joan knew already that at some point she would have to return the plate to her. Once the brownies were eaten, it was either that or else put the plate away among their own as a constant, awful reminder of what has passed. She was almost grateful when Eloise demanded she return the pig, relieved to transfer the brownies onto a plate of their own and pack the plate away today, and so spare herself the hours she knows she’d otherwise spend anticipating its return.

After a minute, no one has come to the door. Eloise tugs on her mother’s shirt. “Ring it again,” she says. “I think I heard Henry in there.”

Joan complies, even though it seems unlikely to her that anyone inside would not have heard those four cheerful notes sound the first time. Still, she counts to thirty before leading Eloise back to the car. “We’ll leave a quick note before we go,” she says.

“What about the toy?” Eloise asks, following her mother across the sidewalk.

“We’ll leave that, too, of course.”

“But what if it gets stolen?”

Joan opens the back so that her daughter can get in. “I don’t think anyone’s going to steal it, sweetheart.” She gets into the passenger seat, leaving the door open, and rummages through the glove box for a working pen, then takes a receipt from the floor of the car and flattens it against the dashboard, backside up.
“Here is your plate,”
she reads aloud as she writes for Eloise’s approval,
“and a toy from my daughter for Henry. Thank you again for the brownies. Joan Jacobs.”
She looks at Eloise in the rearview mirror. “How does that sound?”

Eloise’s two eyes blink in the mirror. “Can I put my name, too?”

Joan concedes and gives her daughter the note and the pen. “Okay,” she says when Eloise has finished. “Sit tight.” She drops the note into the bag and again she climbs the three steps of the stoop, and she is just about to loop the bag’s handles over the doorknob when suddenly the door opens; when Joan looks up, she sees Elizabeth Favazza’s face in the shadows on the other side.

“Oh! I didn’t think anyone was home,” Joan says in surprise.

“I was on the telephone,” Elizabeth Favazza says.

Joan wonders if this is true, or if she had been watching Joan and Eloise through the window all this time. The woman steps out onto the stoop; she is again wearing a T-shirt that is slightly too large, though it could just be that she is so petite she seems
to disappear in anything she wears—her loose linen pants seem large for her, too. She looks at Joan quizzically, almost with an air of mistrust.

Joan lifts the bag in explanation. “I was just going to leave this for you.” She extends it forward. “Your plate. And a toy my daughter wanted Henry to have.”

“My plate?” Elizabeth Favazza repeats; she appears confused.

“The brownies,” Joan explains.

“Oh,” the woman says, and her expression softens with comprehension. “I wondered why you were back. I didn’t even think about the plate when I wrapped those up—I would have forgotten completely.” She takes the bag from Joan’s hand. “But thank you.”

“Of course,” Joan says. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Not at all.” Elizabeth Favazza reaches into the bag and takes the pig toy out; its ropey limbs dangle. She stares down at it with a calm distraction, as if lost in thought, and then she looks up at Joan, regards her in an appraising manner that makes Joan feel like some sort of specimen.

“She’s seven,” Joan says, as if to explain. “She felt strongly.”

Elizabeth Favazza nods. “Well thank her, too,” she says. She looks toward the car, where Eloise sits peering out the window. “That must be your daughter there,” she says.

Joan glances back at the car herself. “Yes,” she says. “One of them,” she adds.

Just then, Henry appears in the doorway, and before Joan has time to ask if it’s okay, Eloise has sprung from the backseat and is hurrying toward them; Henry meets her at the bottom of the stoop.

“Henry!” Eloise coos, crouching down beside him. She kisses his mangy fur. “I almost didn’t get to say good-bye!”

Joan and Elizabeth Favazza watch her for half a minute, and
then Joan touches her daughter on the head. “Okay, sweetheart, one more kiss and we should get going.”

Eloise wraps her arms around Henry’s neck; the dog wriggles free and runs back into the house.

“We’ll leave you,” Joan says. “We just wanted to leave those off, and . . .”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth Favazza says. “And thank you for taking such good care of Henry,” she adds, looking down at Eloise.

Eloise smiles, eyes downcast, but she is clearly pleased. She turns and runs back to the car, where she has left the back door open.

Joan follows, and she has just reached the bottom of the stoop when Elizabeth Favazza calls out quietly behind her. “I know who you are,” she says.

Joan freezes where she is, feeling suddenly hot and cold at the same time, nearly dizzy. She composes herself and turns around. “I’m sorry?”

Elizabeth Favazza stands on the stoop, her head tilted slightly to the side. “I know who you are,” she repeats. She runs her forearm across her brow, the pig toy in her hand. “Joan Jacobs. I mean, I read the police report. I know where it happened. I—I thought that might have been why you were back.”